[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[December 3, 1997]
[Pages 1693-1695]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
[[Page 1693]]
Opening Remarks in a Townhall Meeting on Race in Akron, Ohio
December 3, 1997
Thank you. Thank you very much. Dr. Ruebel, thank you. We're
delighted to be here at the University of Akron. I want to thank my good
friend Senator John Glenn and your Congressman, Tom Sawyer; Congressman
Lou Stokes; Congressman Sherrod Brown for being here. And Mayor Don
Plusquellic, thank you so much for making Akron so available and for
doing all you have to help us. I thank the county executive, Tim Davis,
and all the people here in Akron who have just been wonderful in helping
us to put this together.
I also thank the people who are behind me who have agreed to be a
part of our panel today and to kind of put themselves on the line on
behalf of all the rest of you, and I hope on behalf of all Americans, in
launching this important dialog.
There are 96 watch sites that have been set up around the country by
our regional administrators, constituency groups, and others who will be
kind of doing what we're doing here in their own way after they watch
us.
I'd also like to acknowledge the presence here today of members of
our racial advisory board: Dr. John Hope Franklin, our Chair; Linda
Chavez-Thompson; Reverend Suzan Johnson Cook; and Judy Winston, our
Executive Director.
Ladies and gentlemen, last June at the University of San Diego I
challenged all Americans to join me for at least a year in addressing
the enormous challenge of making one America out of all of our racial,
ethnic diversity in this country. At the time I did it, a lot of people
said, ``Well, why is he doing this? We're not having any riots in the
cities. The economy is the best it's been in a generation.'' And my
answer was, that's precisely why I'm doing it now, because what I have
tried to do as your President is to get all of us to think about and
work on things that are going to be critical to our future before the
wheel runs off, because if we plan together and work together to make
the most of our common future, we can avoid some of the terrible things
that have happened in other countries, and we can avoid repeating some
of the darker chapters of our own history. And, by the way, we can
acknowledge that we still have some problems and we need to get them out
on the table and deal with them.
Now, to me, this is a critical part of the larger challenge of
preparing our country to live in the next century. It's not just a new
century in a new millennium. There's a whole different world out there
in the way we work and learn and live and relate to each other. All of
you know that. And I have done my best to pursue a vision that would
create opportunity for everybody responsible enough to work for it and
to maintain our country's leadership in the global economy and for world
peace and security and freedom, to give everybody a chance to be a part
of the winner's circle in America. But I know it can't be done unless we
recognize the fact that we are rapidly becoming the most diverse and
integrated democracy in the world.
We have to deal with a lot of the older racial issues that have been
with us from the beginning--from the time of Africans coming here on
slave ships, between blacks and whites; from the time of our moving
Indian tribes off the land, between Native Americans and white
Americans; from the time of the war with Mexico, between Americans and
Mexican-Americans--now increasingly enriched and diversified by all the
immigrants that have come to America in the 20th century.
In the school district that's just across the river from my office
in Washington, DC, there are now students from over 180 different
national groups, with over 100 different native languages, in one school
district. We are becoming a very richly multiracial, multiethnic society
at a time when, in the last few years, we've read of ethnic and racial
hatred and murders and problems and wars from Bosnia to the Middle East
to Northern Ireland to Africa to Russia to India--you name it. And we're
beating the odds so far, with all of our problems.
But I think it is very important that we understand that this is
something that we have to keep dealing with honestly and openly. There
are many people today with whom I have great sympathy, who say, ``Well,
the President shouldn't be talking about race out of context. Most of
the problems that minorities have today
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are problems of economic and educational opportunity that they share
with people who aren't in their ethnic group, and what we really need is
an affirmative opportunity agenda to create more jobs for all the
dispossessed, create more educational opportunities for everybody that
doesn't have them.'' I basically agree with that. I agree with that. But
you have only to look at the rest of the world and your own experience
to know that in addition to that, there is something unique about racial
difference that affects the way people relate to each other in every
society in the world.
It can be wonderful. It can be truly wonderful. We ought not--I
don't like it when people say we ought to tolerate our differences; I
don't buy that. I think we ought to respect and celebrate our
differences. Tolerance is the wrong word here. But we also ought to
struggle constantly to identify what unites us; that's more important
than what's different about us. And that's why we're having these
townhall meetings.
Now let me say, I want to now turn to the people who are here. And I
want to ask all of you who won't be talking to carry on this
conversation in your mind--and all of those at the other sites around
the country. And when this is over, I want you to go out and do this all
over again at work or in any other groups that you're in, because what
we're trying to do here is drop a pebble in the pond and have it
reverberate all across America, because I honestly believe that this is
a good country full of good people. There's never been a challenge we've
ever faced we haven't been able to overcome. And so I ask all of you to
join me and to help us in that.
I also would remind you that if we don't speak frankly about what we
believe, then when it's over, we won't feel very good. I told our
opening speakers, I said, ``You've got to imagine that we're at a cafe
downtown, sitting around a table drinking coffee together. Forget about
the fact that all these people are staring at you and you're on
television.'' [Laughter] ``Don't say this in the way you think it's most
proper. Say this--whatever you have to say--in the way you think is most
honest so that we can move forward together.'' Again, let me say that
this dialog to me is an important part of where we're going.
Now, we have responsibilities in Washington, too. There is an
economic responsibility. There is an education responsibility. A few
weeks ago I announced that we were going to support scholarships for
people who would go out and teach in educationally deprived areas where
we needed more teachers. Today we are releasing a proposal to create
educational opportunity zones to reward school districts in poor urban
and rural areas who undertake the kind of sweeping reform that Chicago
has embraced in the last couple of years, closing down failing schools,
promoting public school choice, holding students and teachers
accountable, involving parents more, providing opportunities for
students who have learning problems to learn but ending automatic social
promotion and giving people high school diplomas that don't mean
anything.
I think that we should support that sort of thing, and we will do
that. We have a policy responsibility. I think we should build on our
economic efforts to create an affirmative economic opportunity agenda
that crosses racial lines, and the same thing with education, the same
thing with health care, the same thing with things like our family and
medical leave law that helped people balance the demands of work and
family. Yes, there is a public responsibility here. But this country, in
the end, rises or falls on the day-to-day activities of its ordinary
citizens.
Again, let me say that I thank the racial advisory board for the
work they have done here. I said I thought three of them were here, but
I see Governor Winter is also here. We have four of the five members who
are here today, and I received a letter from Angela Oh, the member who
could not be here today--is she here? Oh, hello, how are you? I was told
you weren't coming. That makes our board more diverse; that's good.
So we're going to do our part, but I don't want anybody for a moment
minimizing the importance of this sort of dialog. The reason we came to
Akron, as was said earlier, in part is because of this Coming Together
Project you've done here. And I believe if we can find constructive ways
for people to work together, learn together, talk together, be together,
that's the best shot we've got to avoid some of the horrible problems we
see in the rest of the world, to avoid some of the difficult problems
we've had in our own history, and to make progress on the problems that
we still have here today.
Now, I think it's appropriate that we begin this dialog with young
people. After all, they've got more time in front of them than behind
them. And it is their lives that will be most
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directly affected by this incredible explosion of diversity while we
become more integrated into a world of global diversity than the rest of
us.
So let's begin. Our first student here is McHughson Chambers. And he
has an interesting ethnic background himself. I'd like to ask him
basically to begin by trying to level with us about what impact, if any,
race has on his life and whether he believes it affects any of his
relationships with other people and his future prospects in life.
McHughson.
Note: The President spoke at noon in the E.J. Thomas Performing Arts
Hall at the University of Akron. In his remarks, he referred to Dr.
Marion Ruebel, president, University of Akron; Summit County Executive
Tim Davis; and former Governor of Mississippi William F. Winter, member,
President's Advisory Board on Race. The discussion was part of ``One
America: The President's Initiative on Race.''